Olympic Forest National Park

Liz Meyer Driving for miles in a forest with every imaginable shade of green, alongside a lake shining every shade of blue, under a sky of blue with white puffy clouds, and all of it spiked with bright sunlight made the 30 or so mile trip into Sol Duc Hot Springs campground a most pleasurable journey. We count ourselves fortunate with the sunshine, because, looking around, the prevalent moss covering everything hints at the amount of rain that occurs in these parts. Looking up, the height of these pines makes one dizzy. To be sure, we have left the desert behind!

A rainy day in camp

While there is a hot weather warning for 29 palms, I am sitting in my van, under a blanket, with the heater on, and rain outside. The weather isn't perfect all the time, regardless of where you are. We are in an RV camp in Pualsbro, Washington. The region is an historic logging area, founded in the 1800s. The town is charming. Letting the weather dictate the day, we slept in and went to a Norwegian bakery in town for a late breakfast, bought supplies, and came back to enjoy a quiet afternoon in camp.

With lots of time for reflection, I smile at my blessings of good health, my wonderful van, and the opportunities they both offer me for adventure. A special aspect of this trip is traveling with my son Jeff and his two girls, Lauren and Katelyn. They are great travel companions. We will pack up and travel again tomorrow, still heading north.

Liz Meyer

Back in the forest!

Liz Meyer Ahh....camping - i'm back in love with it! An easy drive yesterday brought us to this campsite next to Bainbridge Island, Washington. The island has a delightful little town with a major ferry service across the sound to Seattle. We are camped in a redwood forest with beautiful trees and ferns. We plan to stay three nights here, so we arrived in time to set up a comfortable camp. Later today we will take the ferry into Seattle for some sightseeing. Life is good!
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Portland

Not every day of a camping trip is stellar. This day ends with the hope that we never have another day like it! It started in the beautiful National Forest near Shasta with the only sounds being the waterfalls nearby. With our day's destination being a campground near Portland, I decided to be helpful and search for one, so that we could set our GPS coordinates for the day. Googling "RV campgrounds - Portland OR" gave me a list from which to choose. Only one had a rating (4 star), so I picked it. It's name was "caravan studios", a strange name, which should have been my first red flag. The second red flag should have been it's address – in the middle of Portland. But how could google be wrong? Hitting Portland at 5 o'clock put us in the nightmarish rush-hour traffic, searching for a campground that turned out to be a theater in the middle of the city! Thank goodness for the radios that Jeff and I communicate with, or we would still be looking for each other in that city! We fortunately found each other and a parking lot big enough for Jeff and his trailer and my van to pull in to recover from the trauma, and decide on Plan B, which was to keep on driving up into Washington, adding more hours on to what already was a long day! We finally found a park with one space left, which we were able to squeeze both our rigs into. Instead of waterfall sounds we will be sleeping tonight with the sounds of I-5 just across the wall! On a brighter note we are safe and all's well that ends well – sort of. Good night! Liz

Liz Meyer

McCloud, CA Lake

Liz Meyer The rain chased us, faced us, and skirted us all day, but in the end we were rewarded with a perfect camp site, just short of Shasta. Upon entering the campground, we were enticed by signs to the "upper falls" and the "lower falls" of the McCloud river. The picture is of the lower falls, not so impressive after seeing the Rogue falls west of June Lake. It is cool and beautiful! Love, Liz

June Lake

Have you ever seen a flying crane? Not the bird type, but helicopter type. Wow! What an impressive machine! After settling in to our campsite at June lake, we drove west up the canyon to find that the June Lake ski resort has been converted into the staging area for this behemoth helicopter. Designed to attach and transport big tanks of water for firefighting, it is now being repurposed to carry big equipment up the mountain ridge to try and contain a waterfall gone rogue with the heavy spring runoff. The waterfall is immense and clearly outside the limits of its normal range. Down below where we were, both sides of the road are swamped with runoff, rarely, if ever, seen before. There is still a lot of snow up there and warmer weather coming.

We had a great day, we have a delightful campsite at Oh Ridge, and we are now settling in for an early start tomorrow.
Love,
Liz Meyer

Corn Springs

Liz Meyer Recent rains and a balmy February made this an opportune time to go desert camping. Forests of ocotillos, in full green; hillsides covered with red barrel cacti; robust smoketrees in the washes, and an overall hint of green on the desert confronted me on all sides as I left I-10 and began the 8 miles of dirt road that ended in the Mecca that is Corn Springs. Petroglyphs tell of a thriving oasis in times passed, a dying oasis indicates a hard modern era.

What a perfect place to camp! Although thousands of cars pass by the Corn Springs turn-off on I-10 every day, one can find nature and solitude just 8 miles away. I am camped right on the ledge of the main canyon wash. Three older men are the only other campers, so I went over and introduced myself and the dogs to them, and they offered me a beer 😊. It being only three P.M., I declined, but told them I would bring a glass of wine and join them this evening. They like dogs.

Life is good. Love, Liz and